When Déjà vu Happens on the Family Trip

Journal of Our Journeys, Chapter 12

Tennessee 

In 1972, someone decided to invite my oldest sister, her husband, and their two oldest children to join us on our family vacation. They all packed into a two-door Road Runner, towing a pop-up camping trailer behind.

The plan was to travel together to Tennessee, see Nashville and Chattanooga, then split up. Judy and company would drive on to Florida to visit a friend while the rest of us would swing through Virginia to see relatives there again.

The Country Western Music Hall of Fame must not have done much for me, because I don’t remember any of it. All I can see is the photograph of my niece and nephew outside the building in matching outfits, the girl in pink, of course, and the boy in blue. It was reminiscent of how Mom had dressed Pat and me not too many years before. 

The Wax Museum of Country Stars scared me; the figures looked so life-like. Either Pat or Dad kept saying, “Look! That figure just moved!”

Chattanooga was much more interesting. Ruby Falls and descending hundreds of feet below the ground to get to it was awesome. The falls were a torrent of water, causing the heart to pound and the stone floor to shake.

Rock City, acres of rock gardens through wooded paths and narrow passages of solid rock, had been the dream of Frieda and Garnet Carter.  They also invented Tom Thumb golf, which would one day be known as Miniature Golf. Rock City also had Lover’s Leap, a rock outcropping several hundred feet above the valley floor. 

To get to it, a person had the choice of crossing a solid rock bridge or a Swing-Along bridge held up by cable. Naturally, Pat charged across the swinging bridge, Dad swinging it all the way. I plodded across the rock bridge, scared enough by the chasm below that I certainly didn’t want to feel as if I would be tipped right off of it.

Following the beauty of the outdoors, the trail went indoors to Mother Goose Village, a cave-like place with cubby holes filled with figurines lit by Black Light. I was already old enough to think the characters were somewhat lame, but the black light was mesmerizing. We laughed at each other’s glow-in-the-dark teeth and any white on our clothes.

Shortly after Chattanooga, my oldest sister's family headed southeast while we drove due east to Virginia.

The first night without them, we camped in Cherokee, North Carolina. I don’t need the camper log to vividly recall that little town on an Indian Reservation. Sometime during the night, I woke up with a severe stomach ache. Soon, I was in the toilet with diarrhea – not a good thing in those close quarters. Next, I was throwing up. Mom says she wasn’t overly concerned until I started passing blood; then, it was time to pack up camp and find a hospital.

I don’t remember how we got there; all I remember is lying on a gurney in the Emergency Room. I slept on and off, while Mom sat at my side the entire night, and once when I was asleep, I dreamed about Cheerios. What in the world was up with that? And more importantly, why do I still remember that all these years later?

The Déjà vu thing is that over Spring Break in 2008, my mom, my daughter Val, and I drove to Virginia to visit those same relatives. By suppertime of the second day on the road, as we drove into Danville, Virginia, we decided to have dinner at the Kentucky Fried Chicken and then find a motel for the night.

The only problem with that was the sandwich that Val ordered. Hours after going to bed at the Super 8 on the other end of town, Val started vomiting. By three am, my mom and I decided that enough was enough, and we dragged my poor teenage daughter into the car to begin searching for the nearest ER.

The night clerk at the motel tried to be helpful, but in the dark of the night, her directions made no sense. We just started driving, hoping to run across a big blue H sign.  

The Danville Regional Medical Center is a nice, modern facility, and I recommend it if you are ever in the area with a crisis in your car. 

It didn’t take the doctor (was his name really Dr. Dan, or was I sleepwalking at the time?) long to diagnose food poisoning, and we had no qualms about accusing the Colonel. With IV fluids and Compazine running, Val was able to fall asleep in her hospital bed. Grandma and Mom, on the other hand, dozed fitfully in our hard plastic chairs, our heads bobbing and jerking, until they released Val at seven am.

Thankfully, there was no third ER visit on other trips to Virginia.